Tagged: Jorge Posada

I’ve had enough of hearing about this so-called “Sports Illustrated Cover Curse”. It’s ridiculous, silly, and far from the truth. Wake up, people. Curses are what teams like the Boston Red Sox and the Chicago Cubs use as excuse for failure. We’re the New York Yankees. Nothing can curse us.

It all started when Sports Illustrated featured our Core Four on the front cover.

Yankees fans everywhere began to worry. They claimed that the magazine has cursed teams such as the 2009 New York Mets in the past by featuring them on the cover, and they’re sure to curse the Yankees. This worrying soon became panic, as Jorge Posada and Mariano Rivera experienced stiffness and strain, and were therefore unavailable to play.

People didn’t completely go crazy, however, until this game, when Andy Pettitte was removed relatively early. He was pitching a gem, yet he left the game and Mitre came in. No one knew why at first, and we were all confused. The bullpen was a little messy, but managed to hold on to the lead, and secure the win for Andy, who is now 4-0.

Soon after, we found out that Pettitte is suffering from elbow inflammation in his left arm.

Three of our Core Four are currently injured. They’re relatively minor injuries, but still injuries nonetheless. Are the editors of Sports Illustrated to blame for this, since they featured them on the cover? Don’t be silly. Unless the editors went into the weight room and changed the weights used by our players during workouts, they’re not to blame.

Is it a pure coincidence that three of our Core Four are injured? No, not exactly. While the synchronization of these injuries is coincidental, the fact that they’re injured is not.

Welcome to the lives of baseball players over the age of 35.

Mariano Rivera, Andy Pettitte and Jorge Posada are all in their late thirties, and have played well into October in every year of their careers, except for one. Well, to be more precise, Andy Pettitte didn’t play in the postseason in three of his years – he missed two postseasons with the Astros.

Playing well into October, year after year, takes its toll on a player’s body when he reaches his upper thirties. It happens. Whether we like it or not, the members of our Core Four are getting old. That doesn’t mean they’re any less amazing than they were, it just means that they’re going to start getting injured more often.

Again, everyone needs to relax. We have nothing to worry about.

Jorge Posada’s injury, while sad to see, will not slow us down. We have a fine temporary replacement in Francisco Cervelli. Even without an injury to Posada, we’re going to be seeing a lot of Cervelli this year, when Jorge needs a day off. Frankie is a great replacement. He’s wonderful in defense, and his offense is also very good. He lacks Posada’s power, offensively, but he makes up for it with his batting average and base-running. Cervelli would be the regular starting catcher on most teams, so I’m more than happy with him being our temporary catcher until Posada comes back.

Mariano Rivera’s side-stiffness doesn’t worry me too much. He’s had it before, and got over it. Granted, it’s a little early in the season to have it, but it’s nothing to go crazy over. He just needed a few days off to rest, and he’s probably ready for the series at Fenway. If he isn’t, we have Joba Chamberlain as our backup closer until God’s return. Joba has proven to be a great arm in the bullpen, and we’ve seen his velocity go back up to the high 90s. So, until Rivera returns, Chamberlain will rake the saves.

Andy Pettitte’s injury is slightly more worrying. The inflammation is in his throwing arm, and that’s never a good thing. However, it’s only May, and if this injury was bound to happen, I’m glad it happened now, instead of August. He can recover from it, and continue dominating on the mound.

While Pettitte’s gone, we’ll have to make do with what we have. We most certainly have three starting pitches who are solid. CC Sabathia, AJ Burnett and Phil Hughes are all in top form this year. Javier Vazquez is struggling, but will hopefully turn it around. We also have Sergio Mitre as a temporary starting pitcher, and he’s shown very good pitching so far this season. So, with three solid starters, a risky fourth starter, and a fill-in fifth starter who manages to get the job done, we’ll be fine. We only had three dependable starters last year, and that turned out well for us. This year, it’s only temporary. Let’s not panic, people, our season is still hot.

The only injury to a Core Four member I’d really worry about would be an injury to Derek Jeter, God forbid. I wouldn’t like to see Ramiro Pena as his replacement on a regular basis. I refuse to discuss this any further.

In conclusion: Calm down. We have nothing to worry about right now. We’re still in the beginning of May, none of the injuries are season-ending, and everyone will be healthy and back in the lineup/rotation/bullpen in no time.

Until then, relax. We have good replacements for them, and we’ll continue winning games.

Normally, teams are nervous about facing their opposition’s Ace. That is the one game in the series that you can expect to lose. Not our New York Yankees. We fear no one. We have the bats to make starters look like Minor Leaguers, and leave them crying for their mommies after their starts.

Saturday’s game against the Texas Rangers was yet another example of the destruction our Bronx Bombers cause. We won the game 7-3, and secured the series win. This is the first time since 1926 that the Yankees have won the first four series of the season.

AJ Burnett pitched a gem. His pitches were nasty, especially his mean fastball. He shut out the Texan bats, and allowed six hits in his seven scoreless innings. He only walked two batters, and struck out seven. AJ was absolutely amazing. He didn’t have his “trademark” inning in which he gave up a few runs, only to settle down and pitch wonderfully for the remainder of his outing. He was lights-out from start to finish.

Another Yankee worth mentioning is Jorge Posada. Hip Hip had his 1500th career hit on Saturday, to become the fourth catcher (and 19th player) in Yankees History to reach that mark. Posada has been known to be one of the best catchers offensively, and now he joins the likes of Yogi Berra, Bill Dickey and Thurmon Munson as one of the Yankees’ elite catchers.

Congratulations, Jorge, on your 1500th career hit. I’m proud to say that I’ve seen every single one of those hits, and each one made me prouder to be a Yankee. Thank you for giving me these memories. Here’s to many more!

On a night where you’d expect our hitters to have some difficulties while facing our opposition’s ace pitcher, the Yankees lineup was hot. Base-hits galore, our batters forced Scott Feldman out of the game after just two innings. When Doug Mathis came in to relieve, our lineup continued the beatdown. Derek Jeter hit his third home run of the season in the third inning, while Alex Rodriguez dropped his first “A-Bomb” of the season in the fourth. Our hitters were on fire, but the most impressive performance came from Brett Gardner.

“Speedy Gardzales”

During one of the games which started at 3 a.m. this season, I was trying to find a nickname for Brett Gardner. In my second sleepless night in a row, the best I could come up with was “Speedy Brettzales“. A fellow Yankees fan said to me “Speedy Gardzales is better“. Indeed, it is. So, from now on, I shall nickname him Speedy Gardzales. His speed blows me away. Literally, he can do that.

Gardy had three singles on the night. What’s so great about that? Well, none of his hits reached the outfield grass, they were three infield singles. That is amazing. Granted, the Rangers don’t have the best fielders in the game, but Speedy Gardzales’ legs are enough to make Gold Glove winners nervous. In one of those singles, Brett’s running forced Feldman to throw the ball wide to his first baseman. In another single, Gardner beat out a throw from the
shortstop to the first baseman. While on base, Gardner stole second, forcing a throwing error that scored Posada.

Brett Gardner’s base-running allowed the Yankees to score the majority of their runs that game. Whether it was directly because of his singles, or because of his speed extending the innings, we might as well give him most of the RBIs.

In honor of Brett Gardner’s legs being a huge asset in our Yankees lineup, I came up with 20 facts you may have not known about Brett Gardner.